Nation's Largest Charter District OK'd in Fla.

By Darcia Harris Bowman

As the number of charter schools continues to grow, some of the movement's true believers are casting a skeptical eye on efforts to award charter status to entire districts.

Last month, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his Cabinet made Volusia County schools the first public charter school district in the state and the largest in the country. Like the operators of individual charter schools, the central administration of the 66-school system is now free from many of the state rules and regulations that bind regular districts.

"For years, we had been working with our legislative delegation in an effort to remove what we felt were burdensome regulations that were hindering us," said Tim J. Huth, the deputy superintendent of the 60,500-student district in central Florida. "What we really wanted was some flexibility in...